


The Musings of John Blythe, circa 1894

by hotchpotch



Series: The LGBTs of Avonlea [1]
Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, Kinda?, M/M, POV Outsider, Pre-Canon, Young Gilbert Blythe, also i really headcanon baby!glibert having a crush on tillie for like the longest time, basically gilbert's bi, but i do love dianne quite a bit more than shirbert so if i make this a series keep that in mind, i did way too much research for a character that i have no intention of keeping, oc has no bearing on canon, part of a series eventually, the pairings aren't really the focus so im hesitant to put them in the relationships tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22317760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotchpotch/pseuds/hotchpotch
Summary: In five years he’ll have sweethearts enough to line the village: in ten, he may very well be married with a boy of his own.John wonders, sometimes, which sweetheart will be the sticker.
Relationships: John Blythe & Gilbert Blythe
Series: The LGBTs of Avonlea [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1606369
Kudos: 22





	The Musings of John Blythe, circa 1894

He has always been such a serious little thing, John’s boy. _My fault in part_ , for John Blythe finds himself contesting with that lingering sickness time after time, never quite able to shake it, never quite able to ignore it, and Gilbert bears the brunt of the work he leaves behind. They’ve had farm boys stay on for a while and help but they come and go like the tide, and it’s become an all too familiar sight to see little Gilbert pottering about with a watering can or pulling on the rope of their livestock, as if he has any true control over the beasts.

But he can’t be doing too bad a job, still and all. John recalls happening upon his boy in the barn one night long ago, when he was just a tot, all curled up in amongst the hay and snoozing peacefully but for his face, scrunched up even in sleep. In the midst of night he’d crept out to tend to one of their more nervous cows — a heifer named Susie, belly heavy with her first calf. When John thinks on that memory, he knows his boy is just plain _good_. No amount of chore-doing and father-tending can make a little boy so good.

A serious little thing, but not a sad little thing. _That_ , thanks be to God, is the only thing keeping John sane most days. Because John is not built for a farming life, a static life; it makes him all itchy and trapped and restless. He knows Gilbert knows. They’ve taken small trips before, none longer than a week or so but it’s a week or so of bliss and Gilbert enjoys it just as much — but he’s _happy_ in Avonlea and John is very bloody grateful for it even if it makes them different. He’s probably not built for fathering, neither, but his dear one believed he could do it ( _relied_ on him to do it) and Gilbert needs him to be built for fathering, so he’s glad he hasn’t messed up that much. He’s raised a _good_ boy. A truly good boy, clever and responsible and nurturing. _Your mother would be so proud of you,_ he tells him, as often as he can, because he knows she would be bursting from the seams with pride. And it makes Gilbert smile.

He’s getting older. Almost ten and lanky like all boys are at that age, half-grown. His face looks like his very own, now, rather than just a shadow of his those that bore him. He looks like a _person_ , which feels odd to think, because Gilbert is the sort with a soul far too old for his body and a mind far too wise for his years. It won’t be long until his boy isn’t even a _boy_ anymore. In five years he’ll have sweethearts enough to line the village: in ten, he may very well be married with a boy of his own. A bittersweet ache squeezes John’s heart at the thought that this lingering sickness may just take him before he can see it happen.

John wonders, sometimes, which sweetheart will be the sticker. Little Ruby Gillis has just begun to take a shine to the boy, he’s noticed, and the younger Andrews girl (John can’t quite recall her name) has been known to flutter. Perhaps it’ll be a girl from another village, or from Charlottetown, or perhaps she’ll not even be from Canada at all! Perhaps Gilbert will travel as he had, _further_ than he had, and find his bride in America or England or Spain. The only interest in girls he’s ever had, to John’s knowledge, has been in young Tillie Boulter when he was eight and she nearly seven. And God, even in that he’d been serious; he’d gathered up his two most precious toys and sold them to the pawnbroker, using the money to purchase a tiny little box of beads in Charlottetown and painstakingly thread together a ring large enough to stretch around the girl’s wrist for until she could fit it around her finger. He hadn’t wanted her to grow out of it.

‘Girls like pretty things, don’t they?’ Gilbert had asked, picking out the most sparkly set of beads. And John had laughed and said “Yea,” and secretly bought back the toys, because while the gesture was very sweet he hardly thought this fleeting fancy would last for long.

It had. It had lasted years. Only a few months ago, in fact, Gilbert had approached and informed him, quite certainly, that he was no longer intending to court Tillie Boulter once they reached maturity. John himself had forgotten that was ever a plan — but he supposes, now, that that is the nature of Gilbert. Serious, clever, responsible. An old soul.

At ten, he’s older than ten. Old enough to worry about his father’s seemingly perpetual infirmity, and old enough to learn how to tend to a sick man. They never send for a doctor now that Gilbert has a handle on things, but his inexperience makes him worry more even if he tries to hide it from John. He gets frustrated at not knowing how to _fix_ it all ( _solving problems comes more naturally to him than soothing them_ ), but John also knows he’s afraid. And John has never wanted a slow death, a pitiful death — much better one of action, of purpose, of meaning, to be struck down in his prime (though his prime is long gone) — but if it means Gilbert does not have to lose his father young then he’ll certainly take it. Once, the Blythes had been a large family, but no longer. Who would be left for Gilbert without John?

*

It’s three more trips and two years later, when Gilbert has just turned twelve, that John contemplates if he knows his son at all.

This newest farm boy is the most lasting of any. A year and a half in all and still going. He’s the youngest of a brood of Scottish Gaelic settlers, by name of Angus MacRobbie. Thirteen (or near enough it doesn’t matter) and taller than Gilbert by two inches to Angus’s own reckoning. And on the whole, John rather likes the lad. They can pay him cheap, because there’s enough MacRobbies with proper jobs that Angus’s wage is little more to them than a bit extra, and he’s a good worker. He’s strong enough to haul the mulish cows around without much trouble and in harvest he’s proven invaluable.

Gilbert rather likes the lad, too. At first John’s not so worried, because there’s good enough reason to like him — and because his son could do with a friend or two knocking about. That Sloane rarely laughs, and the minister’s boy Moody was a glum, insecure thing himself. Beside merry Angus, Gilbert tends to have a bit more cheer in his face. John will never be sad to see that.

But there are… moments, sometimes, when — when John thinks he sees things he probably isn’t seeing? A little crease in Gilbert’s forehead that always deepens around their farmhand, and not out of thought but out of… well, it cannot be distress. Alarm? Panic? _No,_ thinks John, because what would be the reason? It must be his failing mind, his senses filling in gaps that don’t exist.

It cannot be distress, or alarm, or panic. He _knows_ it, because other times he catches Gilbert, who doesn’t yet notice John hobbling around the corner, glancing over at Angus with something akin to wonder. It’s a face John’s seen in his son when he’d first laid eyes on a steam train, a face he makes when John regales him of his youth spent trekking across Alberta. And it’s not as though Angus is _much_ older, but perhaps to Gilbert the age _thirteen_ is so tantalisingly mature and fascinating and then, well, it’s no surprise that he’s so taken with the boy. Especially since Angus himself is so _accommodating_ , delighted to answer any question Gilbert may have — about the nature of a large family or the way of Glen St. Mary school — even if he rarely has an answer enough to sate his curiosity.

But there’s a worm wriggling in the back of John’s brain that he just can’t seem to brush aside.

He thinks, inexplicably, of that Ruby Gillis again, as he so often finds himself doing nowadays. And he’s ailing, yes, but rarely confined, so he hears whispers around the village from the mothers of all of Gilbert’s classmates, and really, he’s kind of hurt Gilbert has failed to mention the Gillis girl “staking her claim” on him once and for all. What before had been little more than a child’s pining was now burgeoning into the precursor of a courtship. And if what he’s heard is true — the other girls all officially agreeing not to encroach on Ruby’s beau, and the other boys all doing the same on Gilbert’s perceived lady love — then it could be quite… _serious_. In a small town like this? It could mean marriage. And Gilbert hasn’t even thought to mention it to him?

 _Not,_ corrects John in his mind, _that Gilbert has any intention of encouraging this infatuation._ If he had he would have done so by now. He possesses a confidence most children do not. Tillie Boulter was proof enough of that, as was him at eight striding up to her in the middle of play to gift her the bead ring along with a flower he’d taken great care picking — and he’d done so without even a hint of self-consciousness. Mildly, John strikes Ruby Gillis from his secret list of potential daughters-by-law, and the number dwindles to two.

But that look of wonder… he’s seen that before in _other_ things, things not to do with steam trains or lively Alberta tales. His quiet admiration of Tillie, with her genuine enthusiasm and naive kindness, is familiar. John contemplates _Angus’s_ enthusiasm — his lust for life, his openness, his adventurous spirit — and muses if he ought to add another name to that list of his.

*

Of course, it’s just his luck that he finds out that _yes, yes he does_ in just the _worst_ possible way.

Another agonising year of sickness passes (soon, John will rue ever wishing it passed quicker). Angus stays on with them, and out of gratitude his wage is doubled, because really, how fair was it to pay him pennies for doing most of the work? Gilbert, now, is the elusive thirteen, yet his questions have not ceased; in fact they’ve mushroomed, because now John has to deal with them as well.

Generally, his queries mirror the gossip of the moment, so John does his best to keep well acquainted with Rachel Lynde in preparation. On a day when Gertie Pye’s menses leak through her skirts and she runs from the school in tears, Gilbert asks why she’d been so upset — Billy Andrews had scuffed his knee just that morning and there had been nothing shameful about the blood on his trousers. John tries to stammer a condensed opinion of what his late wife had thought on matters such as this ( _we women,_ she would lecture tartly, _are held to such an impossible standard of convenience that the mere notion of us existing outside the needs of a man is offensive_ ) and Gilbert must have managed to decipher the meaning because he’d only nodded with a little frown at his brow and that had been that.

Another day, when a visiting minister gives a sermon at the church, he comes home with the question of _sexual proclivity_ on his lips, but this time John’s answer is not sufficient; his frown is harder even as his cheeks pink, and he excuses himself from his plate to visit the barn. In his own embarrassment, John makes sure to stay well away.

He does not know what Angus tells his son, nor whether he would like it, but Gilbert must find the answers intriguing because he finds himself wandering back there every so often.

Unfortunately, however, John finds he cannot avoid the place forever.

The walking cane he’s taken to wielding comes in true usefulness now. He makes for sure and certain that the entire amble up to barn is filled with the loud clattering of his cane against the path of pebbles. When he reaches the barn itself he’s quite convinced the boys have scattered, so he leans on it as it was intended to be leant on and creaks around the cow pens searching for Daisy Bell, mother-to-be. Not often does she bother to leave her hay nest so it’s no real surprise to see her slumped in a cushy corner. The calf hangs low, so John knows the time is close. And as many reassurances as Gilbert and Angus give him he cannot help but fret, as it was Daisy Bell’s own mother who had died pushing her into the world. They can’t afford to lose any more livestock.

Daisy Bell snorts, hardly flicking an ear as he nears. It takes a bit of manoeuvring (he’s not as young as he used to be) before he’s knelt at her belly, and ignoring irritated grunts he feels around for the calf.

Then, there’s a sudden huff, amused, from high up in the hayloft. In that moment, any thoughts of Gilbert’s regard for Angus holds no space in John’s mind, so it’s perfectly understandable for him to be curious and want to investigate. He will regret it, of course, but he doesn’t know that yet so off he goes, shuffling up the stepladder. His head pokes up just in time for him to hear the tail of a conversation, and his old bones are aching enough for him to rest up and listen.

‘… suppose it’s natural enough, in th’ way all things are natural,’ comes the musings of Angus, brogue thick but not unpleasantly so. ‘It exists, doesn’t it? Natural enough tae me. Nae shame in natural.’

There’s a hum of consideration from Gilbert. John squints through the hay: from this angle he’s positioned so that he can catch a glimpse of both boys, but it’s his son’s face he can see clearest. A moment of quiet lingers, in which Gilbert eyes his companion, considering — then with a sudden lurch he leans to press their lips together.

 _Clearly,_ notes John, despite the chill settled around his heart, _Angus has little objection._ Stock-still, aye, but his eyes are closed and he looks… relaxed. In a manner of speaking. Most boys would stagger so wildly in disgust that they’d most like fall from the loft altogether. Or worse, they’d push Gilbert out in their place and then John would have to batter the boy with his cane and then where would that leave them with the farm? There’s only so many working-age boys in Avonlea and he is fairly certain they’ve exhausted most of their options, they really can’t afford to lose Angus any more than they can afford to lose Daisy Bell.

So it’s probably a good thing, all in all, that Angus begins, gently, to reciprocate.

And it’s probably about time John inches back down the stepladder.


End file.
